Christine Negroni riffs on aviation and travel and whatever else inspires her to put words to page.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

MH 370 Lawyer Behavior Criticized Yet Again

A disciplinary commission in Chicago has upheld a censure
decision against a lawyer who just last week came under its scrutiny for
her behavior related to Malaysia Flight 370.

Monica Ribbeck Kelly, who made worldwide headlines when she
filed the first case against Boeing and Malaysia Airlines following the mysterious
disappearance of the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March, has been battling the
ethics board of the Illinois Supreme Court since 2011 when she mishandled her
representation of the victim of another crash.

In the earlier case, Kelly continued to file papers on
behalf of Mustafa Gumus, who was injured when Turkish Flight 1951 crashed near
Amsterdam in 2009. Gumus already had a lawyer when people from Ribbeck’s firm went to
see him as he recuperated from surgery in the Netherlands. Whether from
confusion, or the effects of medication is not clear but Gumus signed a retainer agreement with
Kelly’s firm Ribbeck Law Chartered. Shortly after that he sent a letter rescinding his decision.

Even so, for more than a year, Kelly claimed Gumus as her client and would not honor the letter firing her unless his present lawyers, the New York firm
of Kreindler & Kreindler paid her fifty percent of its fee. Kreindler & Kreindler balked and filed a complaint with the Attorney Regulatory and Disciplinary Commission instead. (For 7 years and before the
events in this post, I worked for Kreindler & Kreindler.)

Grogan photo courtesy ABA

Monday's censure was a reaffirmation of an earlier finding that Kelly engaged in conduct “involving
dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”. The three member review board’s
decision was unanimous. “They found she had violated the ethics code,” said
James Grogan, the deputy administrator and chief counsel for the ARDC. The next step is up to the state supreme court
which can adopt the finding or dismiss it, Grogan said. “They could suspend her or do
whatever they think is appropriate.”

The only remedy Kelly has at this point according to her lawyer, George Collins, "is to petition
the Supreme Court" to review. Collins told me Kelly had not decided whether to do that.

Kelly’s problems with Illinois' arbiters of ethics got
worse last week, when, as Lee Ferrin and I reported for ABC News, the ARDC
charged the 47-year old lawyer with making a frivolous pleading following the disappearance
of MH 370. Ribbeck Law Chartered petitioned for discovery in Cook County
Circuit Court against Boeing and Malaysia Airlines claiming the plane went
missing as the result of their negligence.

MH 370 passenger Firman Siregar

Given what we know about Kelly and other members of Ribbeck
Law Chartered, that she has
been accused of “wasting judicial resources” and conduct that is “prejudicial
to the administration of justice” seems a little underwhelming.There is no mention in the complaint of a number of the firm's even more egregious activities.

In her legal action, Kelly claimed to be representing the
father of MH 370 passenger Firman Siregar. In fact, Januari Siregar was a
distant relative. Siregar’s real parents sent a letter to the national newspaper
and the Indonesian government within
days of the filing disavowing the suit and claiming Januari Siregar had no authority to act for the family.

Kelly, von Ribbeck, and a number of others associated with Ribbeck Law Chartered spent
weeks in Indonesia, Malaysia and China getting victims’ families to
hire them in spite of the fact that in the United States, solicitation by lawyers is largely
prohibited.

Ribbeck Law Chartered
goes after clients in transportation disasters but the legal work is left up to
other firms, including Miami's Colson Hicks Eidson. Whether Ribbeck Law is selling the cases - which is not allowed - or sharing fees, which is, is really a matter of semantics.

Why none of these elements wound up in the ARDC complaint
was mystifying to me, so I asked Grogan, who responded with a little semantic maneuvering
of his own.

“Whatever is in the
complaint, is in the complaint and I'm not going to stray. We don't want to make
it too expansive and broad.”

The average reader who is not savvy about how lawyers
in the sometimes-lucrative world of air crash litigation, may wonder; "Why does an attorney bring a frivolous case? Isn't it embarrassing when an
irritable judge tosses it out of court as Judge Kathy Flanagan did, and threatens to impose sanctions on the errant lawyer?"

The answer is this: The first to file a lawsuit following a
high profile disaster, claims the next news cycle. And that puts the firm’s name in front of anyone looking for a lawyer. Some might call it a publicity stunt.That
is the end game, the courthouse is just a stop along the way.

That’s my opinion anyway, not the ARDC’s. Still, in a hint
of what may be in store for Monica Ribbeck Kelly the next time she’s before the
folks who determine what lawyers ought not to do, Grogan did suggest more interesting developments could be forthcoming.

“We are a regulatory authority but also prosecutors. We articulate a position at trial as prosecutor,”
he said. “When you get to trial that’s
when you see the motivations and the details.”